Re: [Nmh-workers] RFC 5322 group support

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

> To: groupname: a, b, c;
> 
> Now the RFCs are a bit vague on what this means.  RFC 5322, Section
> 3.4 says in part:
> 
>    When it is desirable to treat several mailboxes as a single unit
>    (i.e., in a distribution list), the group construct can be used.
>    The group construct allows the sender to indicate a named group of
>    recipients.
> 
> Ok, fine.  I've never seen a MUA actually treat those as a single
> unit, and I don't even know what that would mean from a MUA's
> perspective.

I think it's purely a presentational hint by the author that

    To: cow-orkers: tom, dick, harry; xyzzy

can be so grouped and recipients understand and see those three are
under one umbrella with xyzzy separate.  Receiving

    To: cow-orkers: ; xyzzy

as nmh here dishes up, is very wrong.

> To: undisclosed recipients:;

The author should have explictly written this empty group in this case.

> The way nmh deals with this is to handle the second case.
> Specifically, if you provide something like this:
> 
> To: list: a, b, c;
> 
> When post runs the email will be _sent_ to a, b, and c, but the
> headers will look like this:
> 
> To: list:;

Then nmh is at fault AIUI;  there is no concept of hiding the recipients
here, merely a group labelling of them.  It stops recipients replying to
them.

> - Should we leave the current behavior?  It's been this way forever
> and I think it's the most useful behavior for dealing with groups, but
> I just want to be sure everyone is on the same page.  It doesn't seem
> to be documented anywhere (but it is mentioned in the MH book).

The current behaviour should be solely achievable by

    To: undisclosed-recipients:;
    dcc: tom, dick, harry

One of the nice things about MH/nmh is it's tried to follow the RFCs,
e.g. Gmail still doesn't show Resent-* headers last time I looked.  I
don't think we should deviate for this trivial case.  Is there a clue
why the recipients are being removed in the change history?

Cheers, Ralph.